Feature Article - December 6, 2007 Back toHome Feature Article - December 6, 2007 Cloyne & District Historical Society receives Trillium Grant By Marg Axford

On December 1, the Cloyne and District Historical Society's annual FamilyChristmas Party was a little more festive than usual as MPP for Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington, Randy Hillier, joined them to make a very special announcement and presentation. Thanks to a $27,200 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the historical society will be able to improve access to their archival holdings.

In presenting a plaque from OTF to mark this special occasion, MPP Hillier said, “History is our greatest teacher because it records people's experiences. To progress and move forward beyond tomorrow we must first fully understand where we were yesterday. Historical societies are key to this: recording the efforts of our ancestors and recognizing the importance of our unique heritage of independence and self reliance…”

Over the next two years, the grant will help as the society starts to create a comprehensive archive of all their paper, photographic and audio holdings. With their ultimate goal of providing this archive on the web, this project will help ensure their vast collection of historic materials is available to people near and far. Volunteers will be able to use the new archives to create exhibits to place in local stores, schools and halls because the information will be properly catalogued.

The second part of the initiative will help the society to publish the fifth printing of the popular local history book: The Oxen and the Axe. First published in 1974, its popularity continues as new people move to the area, new cottagers come to appreciate the area, as family members grow up and leave the area wanting to take a piece of history with them and as former residents move back wanting to increase their knowledge of the community.

The Cloyne and District Historical Society was established in the early 1970's as the Pioneer Club, devoted to recording and preserving the history and heritage of the local area. While the organization's mission remains that of recording and preserving area history, a third objective is to educate the local community and visitors about the region's rich heritage. This latter goal is achieved most notably through the operation of the Pioneer Museum. Members expand their collective knowledge through interviews, documents, physical research of buildings, cemeteries and villages, and through the discovery of new artifacts.

Approximately 1,000 persons, comprising schoolchildren, cottagers, residents of both

Frontenac and Lennox and Addington counties, campers and visitors passing through the area, visit the Society's Pioneer Museurn each year.

Feature Article - March 27, 2008

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Feature Article - March 27, 2008 Kennebec Historical Societycomes out By Jeff Green

A group of Kennebec residents have been meeting monthly since last summer to discuss the formation of a local historical society. They have been sharing stories, and exploring how to accomplish the goal of preserving and sharing the history of the area.

“We’ve got an enthusiastic group of volunteers who have already begun to gather materials: pictures, letters, etc. and we are looking for a location for materials,” said Sarah Hale, of Arden Batik, a representative of the group who appeared before Central Frontenac Council earlier this week.

The group had a location in mind. There is a storage room in the Kennebec Hall that holds some township records but is otherwise empty, and according to a letter sent to council, “would enable the group to begin what it feels is the valuable task in preserving the heritage of our area.”

John Purdon, Olden councilor, asked Sarah Hale if she had thought of the possibility of a Central Frontenac Heritage Society since there already is an Oso historical society and a railway museum committee.

“To my mind there is something about local history, specifically for towns that have disappeared,” Hale replied, “if there is a Central Frontenac Society as an umbrella group we would certainly welcome that.”

As to the question of how the township could deal with their own material if the space were to be made available to the Kennebec group, interim Chief Administrative Officer John Duchene said that some of the material might no longer be required and could be destroyed and it would be possible to move the rest of the material to township buildings in Mountain Grove, where there is quite a bit of space available. Among the items still in the hall, which used to include the township office for Kennebec Township, is the Kennebec office vault.

“That leaves us with the question of the fee. I would suggest $10 per year, just to make thing legal, “ said Oso Councillor Frances Smith.

“I think this will give a big boost to the group. We’ve purchased a recorder, and we will be getting out and talking to people and recording their recollections,” said Sarah Hale.

Council passed a motion approving the formation of the Kennebec Historical Society and also agreed to lease space in the Kennebec Hall for $10 a year.

Feature Article - April 24, 2008

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Feature Article -April 24, 2008 Maple Syrup:Historically SignificantBy Jeff Green

MP Scott Reid taps a maple tree the old fashioned way with a brace and bit. After much exertion, he asks if he's gone far enough. Vernon Wheeler responds, " Oh you've gone too far, but I didn't want to stop you because you seemed to be having so much fun."

No, this isn't another story about sugar shacks being designated as industrial sites, which is something the Ontario Municipal Property Assessment Corporation tried on for size a few years ago; it's about maple syrup products achieving the federal designation from Parks Canada as an “event of national historical significance.”

The designation was formally announced on a sunny post-maple syrup season day at Wheeler's Maple Products in McDonalds Corners, which is one of three sites that will be hosting the designation. The other two are in the Province of Quebec.

“It is fitting that Lanark County is being identified as the home of Maple syrup in Ontario, and that Wheeler's will be noted as the Capital of maple syrup in Lanark County,” said Lanark Highlands Mayor Bob Fletcher, who was one of the dignitaries at the event.

Scott Reid, the MP for Lanark, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington, represented Environment Minister John Baird in making the designation, which was done on behalf of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, a division of Parks Canada.

“If there is something that is uniquely Canadian it is maple syrup,” said Scott Reid, “I'm actually surprised that this hasn't been done in the past.”

One of the reasons Wheeler's was chosen as the location where the designation was announced, and eventually where a commemorative plaque will be located, is the maple syrup museum that the Wheelers have built in their old sugar shack.

An official with Parks Canada said that the museum contains the largest collection of artifacts related to the maple industry that is located in any one place.

There is no fixed dating to identify when the aboriginal peoples who lived in the “maple belt”, which includes the four Canadian provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario) as well as states in the northeastern United States, began to gather sap and make sugar from maple trees. But gathering and concentrating sugar from sap likely goes back one or two thousand years at least.

The trade and supplementary income that came from maple products was important to the population living in the maple belt before and after the “sweet water” was introduced to the European settlers when they arrived.

“To a degree, these products represent, both at home and abroad, the national identity and way of life of Canadians, and are a symbol of the end of the Canadian winter,” says the background document circulated by Parks Canada to mark the historical designation.

Local historian Claudia Smith, who has written a book called “When the Sugar Bird Sings” about maple syrup in Lanark County, spoke briefly about some of the history of the progression of the industry since 1900. She also explained that it early in her research a 90-year-old man had told her that “when the voice of the sugar bird can be heard, its time to tap”. It took her years to find out what species of bird the sugar bird is, but finally she found out it is the Saw Wet owl, which does sojourn in this region in late winter.

Vernon Wheeler spoke for his family, who had gathered to witness the event. He pointed out his wife Judy, son Mark, daughters Angela, Kristy and Tracy and their spouses and children, who all help out in the business, and said, “One person can’t do it alone. If you get them started young, like my grandchildren over there, they tend to stay with it.”

Vernon Wheeler comes from a family of maple syrup producers that go back to 1868 in western Lanark County. With his wife Judy he purchased his 730-acre bush near McDonalds Corners in 1978. He had planned to log the property but found he had trouble cutting the maple trees because he liked them so much.

He opened his sugar business in the early ’80s, and the rest is history.

And now it is hosting a site of national historical significance.

Oct 30/08 - Inside North Sherbrooke

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Feature Article - October 30, 2008 "Inside North Sherbrooke" Book Launch in ElphinBy Jeff Green

Isobel Graham, Barbara Howell, Beryl Stott

The North Sherbrooke Historical Society was formed three years ago, and last weekend at the Elphin Presbyterian Church, the society marked the occasion of its greatest accomplishment thus far, the publication of a book, “Inside North Sherbrooke, Volume 1”.

To celebrate the book launch and foster further research, the descendants of the families referenced in the book were asked to bring a story or an artifact for a show and tell event.

Inside North Sherbrooke is organized into 14 chapters. Some of them are about specific buildings, such as the McConnochie and Weir houses, and the Elphin Presbyterian Church itself, while others are about families and individuals, such as the Love family, and Elizabeth “Granny” Miller, who was born in Scotland in 1818, emigrated to North Sherbrooke in 1822, and lived a long and productive life, eventually having 43 grandchildren. She died in 1903.

Many of the settlers who built homesteads in the McDonalds Corners and Elphin areas, and towards what became Snow Road and Mississippi Station, arrived in Canada in 1821 on a ship called “The Commerce”.

They were given land grants, and although they were expected to pay the government for the land, the amount of effort required to clear land, build homes and survive in the harsh climate, left little extra money. In 1836 all of the settlers were granted the lands they had been working for 15 years.

Using old photographs, scraps of family history, and genealogical records, “Inside North Sherbrooke” paints a picture of how local, national, and international events shaped the way communities developed over the first 150 years of settlement in the former North Sherbrooke and Palmerston townships. North Sherbrooke is now part of Lanark Highlands and Palmerston is now in North Frontenac.

A gathering of the Wilson clan of Elphin, circa 1900.

At the book launch/show and tell, there were people connected to most of the 14 chapters in the book, and their stories added an additional context.

One of these people was Heather Gordon, whose great grandfather Samuel Gordon obtained the recipe for what is reportedly an old native salve from a local doctor. Samuel Gordon refined the salve and began producing it, and he eventually got a patent for it in the 1930s.

Although Gordon's Salve is no longer a commercial product, the secret family recipe for it remains intact, and Heather Gordon brought with her a small jar that the family made this past summer.

Mona Winterburn is descended from Solomon Benedict, an Abenaki from the Trois Rivies region of Quebec who moved to Robertsville Road partly because of the abundance of ash trees there. Making ash splint baskets was the family vocation. Mona, who lives between Elphin and Snow Road, brought examples of family-made baskets that were sold for many years in the Muskoka region.

Barbara Griffith brought a thick volume that is all about the Love family, who are the subject of a chapter in Inside North Sherbrooke, and Jim Brownlee had a family bible that was brought over from Scotland.

Other stories, such as the relationship between the McDougall and McDougalds, including the existence of Dougall McDougald, brought to the fore the strong Scottish Presbyterian roots of North Sherbrooke that persist to this day.

After the show and tell, the host of the book launch, Beryl Stott, introduced Barbara Howell and Isabel Graham, two other key members of the historical society who have played key roles in the publication of the book.

Inside North Sherbrooke is available at Wheeler's Pancake House. Through the photographic work of photographer and book designer Mary Ferguson, it includes many contemporary photos of log and stone farmhouses and barns that have survived to this day or been refurbished.

In researching the book, Beryl Stott came up with many historical photos that are reproduced in its covers, and the text includes a lot of detail that paints its own picture of how people lived their lives in the pioneering days of North Sherbrooke and Palmerston townships.

The book has been purchased by the Kingston Frontenac Public Library and will be available from the Sharbot Lake branch.

Back to HomeFeature Article - August 13, 2009 Restoring sacred ground at the Cloyne Pioneer Cemeteryby Julie Druker

Rev. Judith Evenden, Mary Kelly, Eileen Flieler and Margaret Axford

An important part of Cloyne’s 150th Anniversary celebrations this past weekend was Sunday’s 2:00 pm dedication service at the Cloyne Pioneer Cemetery.

The restoration of the cemetery was a partnership between several groups: the Land O' Lakes Garden Club, the Cloyne and District Historical Society, the Township of North Frontenac, the Community Foundation of Greater Kingston, as well as a large number of volunteers and neighbours.

Close to 100 people attended the intimate outdoor service that was led by Rev. Judith Evenden of the Cloyne/Flinton Pastoral Charge. Dignitaries present were Mayor Ron Maguire and county wardens Janet Gutowski and Gordon Schermerhorn, all of whom supported the cemetery restoration project. MP Scott Reid was unable to attend but Rev. Judith read a letter of greeting from him.

Representatives from various area churches included Glen Dixon, Tim Kuhlmann, Carol Lessard and Bruce Kellar, and each had a chance to say a prayer.

Reverend Judith gave a brief history of the cemetery grounds and the development of the project and highlighted the reason for the gathering. “A tremendous amount of work in terms of physical labour and painstaking research has brought us to this day. Today with this service we set apart this place and hope that for many years to come it will continue to be respected, maintained and honored as a sacred place to remember and give thanks.”

Margaret Axford of the Cloyne and District Historical Society spoke about how she, Eileen Flieler and Mary Kelly went about solving the puzzle of who was buried at the cemetery. With the help of Harry Meeks they worked from old Methodist church death records and checked against those against other church records. According to Margaret, “By the process of elimination we arrived at a list of approximately 40 names of people who we reasonably assume are interred here.”

Those 40 names have been engraved on the plaque. Margaret said that the search will continue through checking old newspaper records and that if and when more names are found, a new plaque will made and those names added to it.

It is assumed that 80 people were buried at the cemetery.

Margaret also spoke of the naming of Cloyne and its connection with the other Cloyne in County Cork, Ireland. She read a letter of greeting and congratulations from Cloyne, Ireland, which included a short history.

Mary Kelly of the Land O’ Lakes Garden Club spoke next. “This place has always been a very spiritual place for me…. We wanted to restore the cemetery to a place of peace and tranquility and to pay homage to the pioneers who founded our town.”

Mary paid tribute to Lynn McEvoy, the founding president of the Land O’ Lakes Garden Club, who drew up the master plan for the project. She also thanked members of North Frontenac Council for their ongoing support and the Community Foundation of Greater Kingston, who awarded the project a $4,800 grant, and of course all of the volunteers and neighbours who helped along the way.

Tod Dorozio then played the moving Brahms’ “Lullaby” on the recorder, which was dedicated to the children who rest in the cemetery. Eileen Flieler, secretary of the Cloyne and District Historical Society unveiled the plaque and read each of the 40 names engraved on it. Under those names on the plaque is written, “We thank you for founding our town; although most of your graves are not marked you will never be forgotten.”

Back to HomeFeature Article - August 6, 2009 Cloyne after 150 years – looking back at pioneer daysBy Jeff Green

One hundred and fifty years ago the communities of Flinton and Kaladar were a few years old, but to the north it was more of a wilderness area.

In 1859, a post office was opened in Cloyne, which was named after a village in County Cork, Ireland, and members of the Cloyne and District Historical Society will be marking that event at a celebration this weekend.

The Cloyne 150 year celebration is as much about the enduring efforts of the historical society itself, which was founded in 1972 as the Pioneer Club.

It will also be marking the ongoing rehabilitation efforts at the Pioneer Cemetery in Cloyne by North Frontenac Township council, the Land O'Lakes Garden Club, the Historical Society, and some volunteer genealogists. A plaque will be dedicated on August 9 at 2 pm.

Settlers came to Cloyne as a result of the building of the Addington Road, which started at the Clare River in what was then Sheffield Township (now part of Stone Mills) and ended at Hydes Creek on the Madawaska River, 56 miles to the north.

Dense forests in the region were being heavily logged by companies that were sending as many red and white pines through the Madawaska and Mississippi River systems as possible, to be shipped to England for use in shipbuilding and large-scale factory construction. At that time it was illegal to sell the logs to buyers in the colonies; they all had to be shipped across the ocean. In addition, only logs big enough to be cut into 12-inch square timbers were suitable, leading to a massive amount of slag as the result of logging.

This was in spite of warnings that the net effect of this logging would be to provide an income to settlers for a short time, but once the trees were gone there would be nothing left but relatively poor farmland.

The Addington Road was built just after the townships of Abinger, Ashby, Barrie and Denbigh (a total of 205,000 acres) had been surveyed. The road was expected to encourage settlement, and records show that it had a measure of success.

The conditions of settlement were rather onerous: “That the settler be 18 years of age or over; that he take possession of the land allotted to him within one month and put in a state of cultivation at least 12 acres of the land in the course of four years, build a house of at least 18 x 20 feet, ..., after which accomplishment being fulfilled, the settler has the right of obtaining title to the property.”

These were difficult conditions, particularly since the tools settlers had at their disposal were rather rudimentary from today’s perspective. In place of chainsaws, there were axes and hand saws, and in place of tractors and ATVs there were oxen and horses.

It must have been particularly disconcerting to the settlers when they came to realise that the very logging that opened up the region also destroyed the soil that was necessary to grow crops on the land.

Life was particularly difficult for the earliest settlers. An account in “The Oxen and the Axe”, a book of local history, describes the life of the Meeks family, one of the first families to settle, in 1858.

It took years for the settlers to develop the skills they needed to thrive under local conditions. “Deer were plentiful enough when the first settlers came in, but although short on food often enough, it seems that the settlers did not know enough to kill them, nor did they know how to trap the numerous fur bearing animals. As they lacked enough tools and livestock, they also in many cases, did not have firearms or trapping equipment,” (The Oxen and the Axe – page 14)

Denis Meeks, who brought his wife and nine children to Cloyne (five more were born afterwards), had to walk 80 miles to Newburgh and carry supplies home on his back. A typical meal at the Meeks' table in the first years consisted of potatoes and salt. Eventually, the Meeks obtained a cow and became less isolated as more settlers moved in and opened saw mills and stores, but the first few years must have been difficult.

During the logging years, many of the men worked seasonally as loggers and the rest of the time establishing hardscrabble farms. Lumber barons controlled the logging industry, some sending logs to the Ottawa River, particularly McLaren and Caldwell, and Rathburn and Gilmour, based on Lake Ontario. Gilmour built a tramway to send logs from Mazinaw Lake to Pringle Lake, to Skootamatta and eventually to Trenton.

Over time churches were established and took hold; schools were opened and the economy became more diversified. The impact of the logging practices of the 1870s to the 1890s, when the logging companies moved out, are still being felt today. Clear-cut logging brought about a large number of slag fires in its wake, and also disturbed an ecological process that had created a reasonable amount of soil over the bedrock of the Canadian Shield. With the trees all gone, much of the soil went as well, leaving bare rock. This happened even though warnings were published in the 1840s that clear cutting on the Canadian Shield would inevitably have this effect.

TOURISM: Tourism has been a major part of life in the area for over 100 years. The Wickware Hotel in Cloyne, built by Libeous P. Wickware, was a going concern in the late 19th Century, and in 1903 Wickware’s store was opened. The hotel burnt down in the 1960s.

And of course, there is the rock. Bon Echo Rock, at the Mazinaw narrows, is the centrepiece of Bon Echo Park, which draws 200,000 visitors each summer. Aside from its dramatic presence in the landscape, Bon Echo Rock also has red ochre pictographs at its base.

Back in 1899, the Bon Echo Inn was built by Doctor Weston Price, a dentist from Cleveland who grew up in Newburgh, and whose wife had once taught school in Ardoch. The hotel was sold to Flora MacDonald Denison after several years, and it continued to be a haven for tourists who were intrigued by the dramatic visage of the rock, as well as the pleasures of Mazinaw Lake and the dozens of lakes in the region.

Flora MacDonald had a somewhat eccentric admiration for the America poet Walt Whitman, who died in 1892 in Camden, New Jersey. She formed a Walt Whitman Society with Horace Tauber, one of Whitman’s biographers, and published a series of magazines. In 1919 she had passages from “Leaves of Grass” engraved onto Mazinaw Rock, which she had nicknamed Old Walt’s Rock.

Flora died in 1921 and her son Merrill took over. Merrill Dennison was a well-known playwright, and a member of the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, which put him in contact with painters from the Group of Seven. He invited some of the painters to the hotel, particularly A.Y. Jackson, and Bon Echo became included in some of the paintings that have become Canadian icons. The hotel burned down in 1936 and Merrill Dennison turned the land over to the province in 1955, precipitating the development of Bon Echo Provincial Park.

PIONEER CLUB - In the 1970s, the Pioneer Club began gathering stories about the lives of the settlers in an area that extends from Kaladar in the south to the shores of the Madawaska at Griffith in the north, west to Weslemkoon Lake and east to Plevna and Ardoch.

Many of these stories were gathered in The Oxen and the Axe, first published in 1974. Four more editions have since been published and the Pioneer Club has become the Cloyne and District Historical Society, which operates the Pioneer Museum. The museum has gathered artefacts that give a graphic picture of the kinds of activities that went into maintaining a community throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before gas-powered vehicles and electricity made life much easier.

Agriculture is not the mainstay that it was 50 years ago in the region, but logging remains a key industry, on a smaller scale than it was in the past, as do hunting and fishing as well as summer cottaging.

PIONEER CEMETERY - As part of this weekend’s celebrations, a plaque will be unveiled at the Pioneer Cemetery in Cloyne, containing the names of the people known to be interred there.

The ceremony will mark a decade of efforts to rehabilitate the cemetery. It was either discovered or re-discovered by the developer who created building lots on Little Pond Road. The ice storm of 1997 knocked trees down over the site, and the microburst of 2002 left it in shambles.

Since then staff and a succession of council members from North Frontenac Township have taken on clearing the small (0.2 acre) site. Then Barrie Ward councillor Will Cybulski organized the local cadets to clear some brush in the summer of 2004 and in 2005 and 2006 Councillors Dave Smith, Wayne Good, and Fred Perry were involved, as was Clerk Brenda DeFosse, along with a host of friends, relatives and neighbours, in a major effort to limb and remove trees and clear brush from the site.

In 2007 the township received a $4,800 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Kingston for landscaping materials. Councillor Lonnie Watkins brought his equipment to help the Land O'Lakes Garden Club, who took on the beautification end of the project in conjunction with the historical society.

The result is a peaceful, well-landscaped space that is a fitting tribute to the efforts of the community that worked on it and the pioneers who are interred there. 

Historical society has plans for Cloyne’s 150th.

Carolyn McCulloch and Marg Axford brought three issues to North Frontenac Council last week, to warm response.

The first was what they have dubbed the “Viking Lodge” project. It concerns a historic log cabin, located on Big Gull Lake on the property of Bob and Lori Cuddy. “It's a near-perfect example of the homes that were built in the 1860s” said Marg Axford, “the logs, which are up to 24 inches wide, are in quite good condition.”

The historical society would like to move it to the site of the museum in Cloyne so it can become, in itself, a display, and it can also house some of the artifacts currently housed in the museum and outdoors. “We have someone who is willing to do the move and the reassembly. We are asking for permission from Council to move this building, and if you can find it in your hearts to waive the fees that would be much appreciated”, said Axford.

The second item is the 150th anniversary of Cloyne and a plan to hold a birthday party for the village in conjunction with the Cloyne Showcase artisans’ show at North Addington Education Centre from August 7-9.

Cloyne was founded in 1859 and named after the village of Cloyne in Ireland. The moderate temperatures and rich farmland of Cloyne, Ireland have never been a feature of Cloyne, Ontario, but the village has prospered for 150 years nonetheless, and the anniversary promises to be a fitting celebration.

“We are planning to celebrate by having non-stop music and displays,” said Carolyn McCulloch.

Preliminary plans include renting a large tent to be located between the museum and the Barrie Hall. The committee would like to have township staff member Cory Klatt on their committee, and asked for a $2,000 donation from the township as well. Council agreed, subject to budget deliberations, which should wrap up later this month.

Finally, Marg Axford addressed Tappin's Bay.

“I know you are all sick of hearing about Tappin's Bay,” she said. Council has been debating traffic at the Tappin's Bay dock on Mazinaw Lake for several years but the historical society’s interest in the bay is less controversial. Records show that it was named after the Tapping family, and was misnamed Tappin's Bay. The historical society suggested that the name be changed to Tapping's Bay. “It will not solve all your problems, but it will be more accurate,” Axford said. Council agreed.

Long Service Awards – Certificates were handed out at the start of the meeting to long-serving township staff & volunteers. 25 Years of Service: Judy Tooley – Employee, Barbara Sproule – Committee Member, Leo Ladouceur – Fire Volunteer,Ruby Smith – Committee Member, and Stan Seitz – Fire Volunteer 15 Years of Service: Colonial St. Pierre – Fire Volunteer, George Clement – Fire Volunteer, John Ibey – Employee, Kevin Wheeler – Fire Volunteer, Randy Schonauer – Fire Volunteer, Scott Gemmill – Fire Volunteer, Tom Olmstead – Employee, and Dale Gemmill – Fire Volunteer 10 Years of Service: Linda Flieler – Fire Volunteer RonJones – Committee Member Steve Hermer – Employee, Christine McMurdock – Fire Volunteer, Gregg Wise – Employee, Norm O’Brien – Employee Roger Millar – Fire Volunteer, Tamara Vladimorova - Employee, and William Hermer – Employee.

Plevna Library – Council has authorized Cory Klatt to make the required arrangements for a portable classroom, currently located at the Glenburnie School in the City of Kingston, to be donated to the township. $26,000 will be set aside, pending budget deliberations, to be spent moving and outfitting the portable for use as a library. The proposed location is the former MNR site, located near Plevna on the Buckshot Lake Road. “I just wanted to ensure that the school board keeps it for us” said Klatt, noting that the building cannot be moved until a concrete pad is built for it, which cannot take place until after the frost is gone.

New roads task force – Councilors Olmstead, Watkins and Perry will serve on a roads task force. Council defeated a proposal to hire a consultant to complete “a cost benefit analysis re: road classification and maintenance levels”, opting for a councilor-led initiative instead. Members of the public will be invited to join the task force.

Helipad agreement cancelled, new one to be built.

An agreement with Tomvale Air Services, on Road 506, which has enabled the township to use the Tomvale Airport as a helipad for air ambulance, has been cancelled at the request of the airport's owner, Claudio Valentini. The helipad will still be available to the township through the winter months, and Council pre-approved a $25,000 expenditure in their 2009 budget to construct a new helipad on land they have purchased in the Ardoch area.

Broadband Application – An application for a major grant towards the establishment of wireless broadband service in the vast unserved areas of the township will be submitted in early February. The project will have a total value in excess of $1 million, with 1/3 of the money coming from municipal sources. Frontenac County is committed to paying the lion’s share of the municipal portion of this money.

An application for funding to cover broadband gaps in Central and South Frontenac and the Frontenac Islands that was submitted last fall was successful. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Councillor Brian Stewart and Beryl Stott with the North Sherbrooke Plaque

In Celebration of Ontario Heritage Week the North Sherbrooke Historical Society unveiled the North Sherbrooke plaque on Feb. 16 at the Elphin Church Hall. The plaque chronicles the history of that settlement, which began in 1821.Among other interesting facts the plaque names North Sherbrooke as the birth place of Jane Sym, the second wife of Canada’s second prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie; the place where John Wilson grew up and the centre for manufacturing the ”life saving” Gordon’s Salve.

The plaque was composed and funded by the North Sherbrooke Historical Society, which was formed in 2005.

Beryl Stott, one of the founding members of the society, spoke and introduced other speakers at the event, who included Frances Rathwell of Archives Lanark, Edith Beaulieu of the Snow Road Women’s Institute and Rev. Doctor Stan Errett, each of whom spoke of the importance of preserving history in the community. Beryl Stott explained the importance of the plaque as a “way of bringing local history to the wider community and reminding us of our settlement roots.”

The plaque will be situated at the junction of Lanark County Roads #36 and #12 in the proximity of the Elphin Presbyterian Church Hall.

 

Rob Leverty executive director of the OHS spoke of the preservation of cemeteries at the Cloyne and District Historical Society’s AGM

Members of the Cloyne and District Historical Society gathered for their AGM on May 17 at the Barrie Hall in Cloyne and were treated to a presentation by Rob Leverty, Executive Director of the Ontario Historical Society (OHS), who spoke about current legislation regarding the preservation of cemeteries in Ontario.

His visit was an outgrowth of the recent restoration and rededication of the Cloyne Pioneer Cemetery, which took place last August. The Cloyne & District Historical Society partnered with the Land O’Lakes Garden Club and the Township of North Frontenac to accomplish that task.

After congratulating members on their accomplishment Leverty stressed the importance that the OHS places on protecting the intrinsic historical, cultural and educational richness held in these often overlooked gems of history. Leverty spoke of many cases where individuals and groups are battling against encroaching development to protect small cemeteries across the province, and of the time and energy the OHS has put into helping the fight for their preservation.

He outlined the current legislation in place and reviewed Bill 149, a private member’s bill submitted by Jim Brownell, M.P.P. for Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, called the Inactive Cemeteries Protection Act 2009, which proposed that no one could relocate an inactive cemetery. The bill received all party support at second reading in the house but died on the table when the government was last prorogued.

According to Leverty there are 5000 registered cemeteries in Ontario and 1500 unregistered. Likely there are countless others that remain unknown.

Leverty emphasized the importance of individuals banding together to fight for the preservation of the cemeteries in their communities, stating, “It’s people like you and groups like yourselves that are saving the history of this province.”

Since the demise of Bill 149 the OHS and other private historical societies in the province have been circulating petitions in support of Bill 149. The petitions are being presented to the provincial government in the hopes of seeing something done to preserve these historic gems. Leverty brought one with him and invited guests to sign it.

Leverty then highlighted the options open for those still hoping to protect their cemeteries and listed all of the options, which included applying for heritage recognition. Unfortunately such recognition can be overturned after just 180 days.

Another option is for individuals to put a conservation easement on their cemeteries, which will ensure its protection into eternity.

Preceding his talk society members gave Leverty a tour of the Cloyne Pioneer Cemetery.

(Information for the following was gathered from the books “The Oxen and the Axe”, and “Lennox and Addington”, which was written by Orland French, although the sections that were used here were written by Marg Axford)

Photo right: Drive the Mississippi, courtesy The Oxen and the Axe

It takes about 45 minutes to drive the roughly 65 kilometres between Kaladar and Denbigh on Highway 41. Starting with the push up Kaladar Hill, the route meanders through rocky, swampy ground until it passes through Northbrook. It then passes over rolling hills, passes along the shoreline of Mazinaw Lake and then heads over hillier and hillier vistas until it reaches Denbigh Lake.

Highway 41 follows pretty much the same route that was laid out by the Perry brothers (Aylesworth B. and Ebenezer) back in 1854 when they oversaw the building of the Addington (a.k.a. Perry) Road. The new road opened up the “back” country to enhance the logging industry and encourage settlement on lands that were thought to have the makings of good farmland.

In the 19th century, the trip along the old Addington Road from Kaladar to Denbigh took the better part of two days to complete. In the book “Lennox and Addington” (Orland French – 2010) the trip is described in the following way: “It was a tiring and sometimes painful experience, up and down endless hills, over bumpy corduroy and around rocks and massive tree stumps.”

There was an easier route to the west, along a well-established Aboriginal trail that ran near the shoreline of the Skootamatta River as far as Flinton.

The region, which had remained in the same state for thousands of years, had been severely impacted by economic interests long before the Addington Road was built. In the 1830s and '40s, drawn by the abundance of white and red pine, logging companies came to the region and they found they could send logs to markets in several directions.

Mazinaw Lake is a headwater lake for the Mississippi River system, draining into the Ottawa River. Skootamatta Lake is a headwater lake for the Moira River system, which drains into Lake Ontario. Just south of Mazinaw, Story Lake is a headwater lake for the Salmon River, which also drains into Lake Ontario, while to the north at Denbigh the lakes drain into the Madawaska River.

This made for a number of water routes for logs to travel to sawmills at major centres, and the seemingly endless supply of lumber from what are now Addington Highlands and North Frontenac townships was decimated by the early years of the 20th century.

With the development of the Addington Road later on, settlement in the area was encouraged for farming purposes, under the mistaken belief that once the pines were gone the land left behind would be rich farmland. But with the trees went whatever topsoil had built up over the granite rock since the last ice age, leaving several generations of settlers with a hard rock existence, trying to eke out a living from an unforgiving land.

Until the loggers left, struggling farmers were able to sell goods to the logging camps, and pick up seasonal work logging as well, but the 20th century brought hard times to the settlements along the Addington Road/Hwy. 41 corridor, although the return of logging with the building of the Sawyer-Stoll sawmill and company town, which was a major employer between the 1930s and 1960s, provided some economic relief.

With rock comes prospecting, and there have been several attempts to establish mines in the region. The Golden Fleece mine near Flinton was started up in 1881 and remained in operation until 1940, but was never a particularly lucrative property because of low-grade ore. Two smaller gold mines, the Star of the East and Ore Chimney mines, were established in 1903 and 1902 respectively in Barrie Township near Cloyne, but never had much success. Near Denbigh, the Jewell Ruby mine was established. It was the dream-child of J.H. Jewell of Toronto and garnets were the rubies that were being sought, but again the grade of the ore was less than ideal. For a time the low-grade garnets were a viable commodity for use in sandpaper, but eventually even that demand dried up.

Tourism has turned out to be a more viable economic activity in the region, with the same lakes and woodlands that drew the interest of lumbermen a century earlier drawing the attention of canoeists, hunters and fishers, summer cottagers and campers.

The foundation of the tourism industry in the region had an unlikely early boost in the mid-1890s from an Ohio dentist's honeymoon. Although Dr. Weston Price lived and worked in Cleveland, he was originally from Newburgh.

The Prices spent their honeymoon camping in the shadow of Mazinaw Rock on the narrows of Mazinaw Lake, near the Tapping family farm. They became so enamoured with the place that they purchased the land around the narrows and built the Bon Echo Inn by the end of 1899. The Inn attracted wealthy tourists from the United States and Canada and gave the region a profile in major cities throughout the Eastern Seaboard. The Inn was sold to Flora MacDonald in 1910. MacDonald was an ardent spiritualist and admirer of Walt Whitman, and although Whitman never visited Bon Echo, she went so far as to have a memorial to him chiselled on the Mazinaw/Bon Echo Rock on the occasion of his centenary in 1919. After Flora died her son Merrill Denison inherited the hotel, and during the 1920s it became a host to members of the Group of Seven and others.

As it turns out, just last week an Arthur Lismer painting called “Bon Echo Rock” sold for $778,750 at a Sotheby's art auction, demonstrating the enduring public fascination with the Group of 7 and Bon Echo.

The depression put an end to a prosperous decade for the hotel, which burned down in 1935. Merrill Denison continued to spend summers at Bon Echo and he was involved in the conversion of his property, and other surrounding lands, into Bon Echo Provincial Park, which to this day remains the singular most popular tourist destination on Highway 41.

KALADAR – Transportation Hub

Photo right: The kaladar Hotel, c1925, courtesy The Oxen and the Axe

The history of the village of Kaladar is connected to the era of motorized transport. Until the Canadian Pacific Railway came through in 1884, there was only sporadic settlement in the area, but with the arrival of the railroad, lumber began to be transported to Kaladar to be loaded onto rail cars. The first post office was established at the start of 1885. For 30 years after that, there were a number of jobs, both manual labour and office jobs, available in Kaladar with the railroad and lumber companies. The CPR shifted its focus to the south in 1915, building a line on Lake Ontario, and with the lumber industry having already fallen, Kaladar suffered. When Highways 7 and 41 were built in the ‘30s, the good times returned, and commercial ventures sprung up at the north end of the village on the highway. There were several garages in Kaladar in the 1950s and the Kaladar Hotel, which had been moved to the edge of Highway 7, thrived. The hotel closed in 2007. The Kaladar Planing Mill, a division of the Sawyer Stoll Company, operated in Kaladar until 1968.

Among the businesses that have come and gone in Kaladar, Bence Motors, founded in 1946, continues to operate as a family-run Ford dealership, garage and service centre. The Kaladar Public School, which was closed in 1971 when North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne was opened, was sold to the Kaladar Community Club. The club, which was founded in 1944, took possession of the Kaladar Community Centre on its 30th anniversary year in 1974. By making judicious use of government grants, the club has been refurbished a couple of times since then, and a youth centre was added in the early 2000s. It is also the headquarters of the Land O'Lakes Tourist Association, which was also founded locally in the 1940s.

Glenda Bence was the president of the association when the centre was established in 1974, and remained in that position until her death in 2007.

To this day, as the population is scattered throughout the countryside, the Kaladar Community Centre is the glue that knits the community together.

NORTHBROOK

Northbrook is a community that owes its existence to the Addington Road. Until the road was built, Glastonbury, located to the east along what is now Glastonbury Road, being located on Beaver Creek, was the site of the local mill, and other commerce built up around it. The two communities were both active until the school in Glastonbury burned down in the 1920s and a new one was built in Northbrook. Some of the businesses that have made Northbrook the commercial and administrative centre of the township of Addington Highlands today, were originally started up by families that are still prominent in the local community. Cas and Lulu Thompson started a grocery store in 1915, a business that was later purchased by Alf and Lulu Northey, who added it to their undertaking business. In the 1950s, John Bolton senior ran the major tourist hotel in Northbrook.

In the 1990s, community members teamed up with Land O'Lakes Community Services to obtain government approval and support to build the Pine Meadow Nursing Home. Today, the nursing home is the largest employer in the town, and is working hard on upgrading its services. This will not only secure Pine Meadow’s existence and provincial funding well into the future, it will also build on the home’s role as a health care centre. The recent announcement that the Northbrook Medical Clinic will become a Family Health Team underpins the role of Northbrook as a centre for medical and social services.

Although it sparked a certain amount of controversy, a stop light was put in by the Ministry of Transportation at the corner of Hwy. 41 and Peterson Road a couple of years ago, right in the middle of Northbrook where the Foodland and Bank of Montreal branches are located. The stoplight was put in to address the needs of seniors who live up the road at the Pineview Seniors apartments, but as the only traffic light on Hwy. 41, it marks the central role that Northbrook has established for itself in the region. Not bad for a town that once was called Dunham and only boasted 25 inhabitants.

FLINTON 

Photo right: The Skootamatta River at Flinton

Its location on the Skootamatta River made Flinton a settlement earlier than any other village in what is now Addington Highlands. In fact there is archaeological evidence that it was a seasonal Aboriginal settlement before the coming of European immigrants. Before roads were built and the land grant system was set up in the latter half of the 19th century, squatters made their way along an ancient trail on the route that is now County Road 29 between Flinton and Actinolite.

There is also a possibility that Samuel Champlain spent a winter on the Skootamatta River at Flinton, although he may have been further to the southwest on the Moira.

In the 1850s, a Belleville-based entrepreneur and future member of the Canadian senate, Billa Flint, built a grist and sawmill in what became known as Flints Mills. In 1859 the town was named Flinton and 98 small building lots were laid out in a grid formation along seven streets, forming a core village that remains intact to this day.

Unlike much of the land along the Hwy. 41 corridor, there was some reasonable farmland in the vicinity of Flinton, and a number of families raised sheep, but wolves/coyotes were a constant problem.

When the lumber industry collapsed early in the 20th century it hit Flinton harder than some other communities because Flinton is located several kilometres west of the Addington Road (and later, Hwy. 41). The Stewart Hotel, which was built just outside of the village boundary when Billa Flint was still a force (Flint maintained Flinton as a dry town) burned down in 1989.

No longer a centre for business and commerce, Flinton remains a population and recreation centre thanks to the existence of Flinton Recreation Centre and the fact that the Flinton Recreation Club is alive and kicking. Flinton is the location of a thriving Jamboree on the August long weekend, and as of this week, has also become the regional host village for the Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.

CLOYNE 

Photo right: Wheelers Store, Cloyne, courtesy Cloyne Historical Society

When North Addington Education Centre opened in 1971, it established Cloyne as an education and training centre. The village also is the home of the Pioneer Museum and is the closest centre to Bon Echo Park, which brings a steady flow of people through Cloyne all year round.

In addition to the tourist population, seasonal residents on Mazinaw, Skootamatta, Marble, and Mississagagon lakes spend up to five months a year living in the vicinity. Cloyne is unique among the villages along Hwy. 41 in that it straddles two townships (and two counties as well) and is the hub community for the Barrie ward of North Frontenac Township, as well as being one of the largest population centres in Addington Highlands.

The Irish heritage of many of the early settlers in Cloyne is reflected in its name, which is taken from a Village in County Cork, Ireland.

The first post office in Cloyne was opened in 1859, and the village grew quickly after that. The first hotel, the Wickware Hotel (which burned down in 1963) was built in 1864. The first school was opened in 1868 and a number of other trades and businesses necessary for a self-sufficient village in the 19th century (blacksmith shop, general store, etc.) all followed in due course. Many families that continue to be active in Cloyne today can trace their routes to pioneer days. For example, there are a number of Sniders in Cloyne today, and they can trace their family heritage back to Charles Snider, who built a sawmill and log slide on Marble Lake at the end of what is now Head Road. The business was sold to Peter McLaren (of the McLaren/Caldwell feud that is so prominent in the logging history of Lanark County). Although Charles returned to his home in Ernestown, three of his sons so preferred the rugged life in the 'back' country of the north to the easy life in the 'front' country to the south, that they stayed behind.

Today Cloyne is a centre for the building trade, as seasonal residents continually upgrade their cottages and year-round homes. There are three hardware/building supply stores in the vicinity of the village (Cloyne Home Hardware, Hook’s Rona, and Yourway Lumber) as well as numerous trades-people. Within the village itself, Cloyne Village Foods, Nowell Motors, and Grand’s Store are all going concerns.

DENBIGH - A community that stands alone

Photo right: The Denbigh Grist Mill, courtesy The Oxen and the Axe

In pioneer days the people who settled in Denbigh found that anything they could not make themselves or access locally was basically out of reach, unless they were able to travel for several days over rough terrain to Renfrew, or to the south on the Addington Road.

This led to a spirit of self-sufficiency, and at the turn of the 20th century there were a number of blacksmiths, a very busy grist mill, hotels, two churches and two stores in Denbigh to serve the population. A description of life in Denbigh in 1900 that was reprinted in the Oxen and the Axe illustrates what life and travel were like back then: “They used to gather all the produce that could be spared in the fall and drive to Renfrew to trade. They had butter in 90 pound firkins or in prints, potatoes, grain, beef, pigs, geese and wool in fleece and spun into yarn. The journey took three days down and back They traded their produce for sugar, flour, and meal by the hundred pound bag to do them a year.”

Until 1903, Denbigh had a lot of competition as a centre from the village of Vennachar, which is located only a few kilometres away, but a massive fire decimated Vennachar, and Denbigh has been a larger centre ever since. Not that Denbigh is large; it has 176 year-round households along with many seasonal residences on Denbigh, Ashby, and other smaller lakes. But the community is tightly knit, and community events are often better attended than those in communities ten times as large.

Located as it is at the junction of Highways 41 and 28, at the very top of Lennox and Addington (L&A), Denbigh is also somewhat isolated politically. Denbigh residents are understandably more oriented to Renfrew County, which is on its doorstep, than to L&A County, which has its administrative centre 90 minutes away in Napanee.